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Don’t fall for their propaganda, says Himanta on Cong’s ‘gerrymandering’ charge
Gandhi said the recent delimitation exercises in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir worked in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday criticised Congress for allegedly trying to “delegitimise” the delimitation exercise carried out in the state in 2023 by terming it “gerrymandering”.
Sarma’s remarks come amid the back-and-forth between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress over the Opposition blocking a constitutional amendment bill that sought to expand the Lok Sabha.
In a Facebook post last week, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had alleged that the BJP was trying to manipulate boundaries.
“One of the BJP’s dangerous plans is to “gerrymander” all Lok Sabha seats to its advantage for the 2029 elections,” he said, citing the 2023 exercise in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir as examples. “We have seen how BJP does this - it hijacked delimitation in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir, where it split up anti-BJP regions and communities for electoral advantage,” Gandhi said in his post.
Sarma on Sunday wrote on X, “Gerrymandering — Congress’ ill-informed cabal has been excessively using this term to delegitimise Assam’s delimitation exercise and, in turn, misinform the nation. Don’t fall for their propaganda.”
He asserted that Assam’s delimitation was “not a conspiracy” but a “long-overdue correction after decades of political neglect and vote-bank appeasement”.
“It reflects the aspirations of the people of Assam and is yet only a stop gap arrangement to prevent our civilisation from being devoured by illegal migration,” he wrote.
Sarma claimed that for years, especially in lower Assam, “unchecked demographic changes had reshaped constituencies while Congress…chose silence because it suited their electoral interests. The real distortion of representation happened then, not now.”.
The chief minister also accused the Congress and Left parties of using the term “gerrymandering” not to defend democracy but to protect a system that had “benefited them politically” in the past.
Delimitation refers to the redrawing of constituency boundaries, and the term “gerrymandering” is used globally to describe the manipulation of such boundaries to favour a particular political party.
Sarma maintained that the exercise in Assam was aimed at “restoring balance and safeguarding indigenous Assamese representation”.
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“It ensures that those rooted in the land, its culture, language and identity are not politically sidelined in their own state,” he added.
“The truth is simple: those opposing this exercise are uncomfortable because it challenges the very imbalance they once exploited,” Sarma said.
In Assam’s Barak Valley region, comprising Cachar, Sribhumi and Hailakandi, delimitation remained a key issue, particularly as two assembly seats were reduced from the region.
